When Microsoft decided to increase the clockspeed of the Xbox One’s GPU, most educated onlookers assumed it was to combat the more powerful PlayStation 4. Side-by-side comparisons told the tale of a cheaper, less-restricted Sony console with a lower asking price, so Microsoft had to make some sort of move to quell the doubters. However, Microsoft creative director Ken Lobb claims that sharpening up the performance of a console less than a year before release is absolutely normal, and his company made this call only because it could.
“Because we can,” Lobb said to Edge when asked why Microsoft tuned up the Xbox one. “And every generation of hardware has been no different, except for this time we’ve been a little ‘look under the sheets.’
“I’ve been doing this since 1988, and every machine I’ve ever worked on gets refined before it gets launched. That’s all that was. Everything’s more transparent these days. So it’s the fact that we told you that it was 800[MHz] that makes 853[MHz] news. If we hadn’t told anybody it was 800, we would have shipped with 853 [and nobody would have known different].”
Improving the clockspeed won’t drastically alter what Xbox One games look like, but to stay competitive with the PS4 and support third-party titles that look as good as on other platforms, the move just makes sense. Fans love to brag about the power of each machine, and while Lobb argues that this is standard procedure, it’s good to know that Microsoft is taking every step to stay in this technological battle. Even if Microsoft sees as these comparisons as meaningless.
